Back in the US of A.

So I've tried multiple times upon returning to the States to write a conclusion post for my Uganda trip (how trite it seems to even call it a trip, but oh well), to bring some closure to myself and to you guys who were Born To Be Alive, to tie things up in a nice little bow and say goodbye. But as you can see by a lack-of-post I have failed miserably.

First I tried writing something reflective. That lasted all of five minutes before I realized that, yet again, I couldn't even coherently reflect in my own head, let alone in writing.

Then I tried writing a "what I will miss about Uganda" post like Brynna wrote about the Czech Republic. But that too proved wayyyy too complicated to sort out.

Then I tried recounting my first 48 hours worth of American meals. This seemed promising because the euphoria I felt about eating was the one emotion I could put my finger on and identify. But then writing this kitschy food porn also felt weird and frankly kind of detestable when it struck me that the variety and quality of foods I indulged in during those first days back was greater than what most Ugandans will taste in their entire lives.

Then I gave up on writing anything altogether.

Now it's been almost a month back. It's my night off from camp (where I'm a counselor this summer) and I'm in Denver with a belly smiling from my first drive through Taco Bell since last year. My friends went to bed and so should I, but I can't fall asleep and now I'm up late with my own flashes of recollection about Uganda. So I thought what the hell, I'll post on the blog.

It's hard to say I've even had time to be back in America, because I'm not in the "real world" -- I'm at camp, where I'm arguably just as cut off from the "real world" as I was in Uganda (only I get "time off" to venture into civilization for one day and one night each week). Time off is so weird because it's like being thrown into an urban world that is so familiar and so distant all at the same time. I drive on highways and shop at grocery stores and go to movies and eat at restaurants and drink at water fountains and poop in public toilets and lounge at bookstores and talk in English and it's all so very odd in the most unexplainable way. Every day since I've been back I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm living in a dream, or that Uganda was all a dream... basically it's like I can't comprehend that life in Uganda and life in America are both happening at this very moment on the same planet, like I can't make these two realities compatible in my mind, like I can't juxtapose them alongside one another, like I can't seem to reconcile the me in Uganda with the me in America. I'm sorry that none of this makes any sense. Well, I'm not sorry. But I acknowledge that it doesn't make any sense, and that's okay, and I hope you too can realize that that's okay.

You see, I can't really tell you what I learned in Uganda other than that life is cloudy and complicated and ambiguous and murky and that sometimes you just can't make sense of it. And sometimes you shouldn't try to make sense of it because the more you try to force life into a straight line the further away you bring it from the truth. I've learned that more often than not the most honest answer to a question is "I don't know" and that that's okay. I've become so much more comfortable with the "not knowing" that is so prevalent in our lives and so much more wary of people who claim to "know the facts." I almost feel silly going back to school to learn about the world because you can only learn about the world by learning in the world, not in a lecture hall at an American university. This is no offense to the professors that get paid to teach us about the world, but let me explain:

Last week I led a "Uganda discussion" with a group of 13-16 year olds and I felt so incredibly awkward with the entire set-up. It was like I was supposed to be their window into what Uganda is like... and the truth was I could never be that window, no one could ever be that window, because to know a place you have to experience it for yourself at an intimate level. You have to walk the streets, befriend the people, learn the language, get lost, get drunk, get smacked in the face by your own poorly-formed preconceptions of "how things are in ____," and finally get filled up with the unquantifiable, inexplicable sense of understanding that comes with calling a place your "home," if only for a short while. That's what you have to do.

Unfortunately this truth doesn't resonate all that well with upper-middle-class American teenagers whose schools have probably pounded into them that every question has an answer and every answer can be obtained via asking a responsible adult like a teacher or, say, a camp counselor, so I had to piece together answers that were prefaced with "Well, I don't know, but..."

I guess I would've been best off writing a post that went something like this:

Hmm, Uganda. I don't know, but it was wonderful.